EF Education First-Drapac announce strong teams for Ardennes classics

EF Education First-Drapac p/b Cannondale has announced teams with some strong climbers for Amstel Gold, La Flèche Wallonne, and Liège-Bastogne-Liège. The Amstel Gold Race opens up the week with some riders from the cobbled races lining up for the race. Sep Vanmarcke will take the start along with Matti Breschel, Lawson Craddock, Alex Howes, Logan Owen, Rigoberto Uran and Mike Woods.

“Amstel is really hard. Those climbs and tiny roads are hard. They come at you all day. With these races, it’s not as obvious as the cobbled classics. These are like a slow burn. I feel a bit sad they’re under-appreciated,” said sport director Tom Southam, who will oversee the Ardennes racing. “The level is really high. Small moments are really decisive in these races. It’s not glaringly obvious, it’s not breaking up all over the place — that kind of attracts me. You can’t expend effort at the wrong time. You want to wait for the last possible moment. These races can change really quickly. It’s easy to think they’re formulaic, but they aren’t. They’re grueling and hard. Any small mistake you make you’re going to have to pay for.”

The team will be ready for one kind of Amstel with Vanmarcke and another entirely with Uran.

“I imagine I’ll be playing the part of aggressor later in the race. Maybe the attack before the attacks kind of thing,” Howes said. “Definitely for Fleche I’ll be the guy to lead into the base of the Mur. Which, as anyone who follows Fleche knows, your result is 80 percent position into the bottom of the Mur. The other 20 percent is VO2 max.”

Woods has finished 12th and 11th at Flèche and combined with Uran provides the team with options. The pair will be joined for the mid-week race by Craddock, Howes, Kim Magnusson, Dani Martinez and Pierre Rolland. Martinez makes his return to racing after suffering a concussion in late March.